Mary Beth Smetzer
Community reporter
Call Mary Beth at 907-459-7546.
Community News and Faith page editor Mary Beth Smetzer grew up in Michigan, arriving in Alaska in 1969 after a stint in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan vaccinating women and children against smallpox.
Mary Beth worked for four years at the Royal Oak Tribune, a suburban Detroit daily, and joined the News-Miner editorial department in 1986. In the early 1970s she edited The River Times at the Fairbanks Native Association, and from 1980-86 she was communications coordinator at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
Mary Beth is longtime quilter and one of the founding members (1979) of the Cabin Fever Quilters Guild. She loves reading and being a grandmother, and enjoys cooking, baking and fishing. She found Fairbanks to be a wonderful, supportive place to raise her three children, Megan, Nick and Gabriel, now pursuing careers in academia, police investigation and computer design, respectively.
Recent Stories
- Thompson, McCarthy win seats on N.P. City Council
- Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — With 82 votes to her credit, Victoria Thompson came out on top on Tuesday, winning a North Pole City Council seat in her second bid for the office in two years.
- Farthest North Forest Sports Festival participants show off their skills in contest
- Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008
- The Farthest North Forest Sports Festival is a quiet competition in contrast to most sporting events.
- Public Safety Report - Oct. 5
- Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008
- The Public Safety Report is compiled from criminal complaints filed in state and federal courts, as well as some police blotter information, trooper dispatches, fire department reports and interviews with public safety officials. Individuals named as arrested and/or charged with crimes in this report are presumed innocent until proved guilty in a court of law.
- Crowds cheer on favorites in vice presidential debate
- Friday, Oct. 3, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — Table seats and bar stools were all taken, and it was standing room only by the time the vice presidential debate began airing on the large screen television at The Pub on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.
- UAF nutrition program promotes healthy, traditional meals
- Monday, Sept. 29, 2008
- Every Monday night, Lottie Lekanoff Roll and her extended family meet at her 83-year-old father’s home in Unalaska for a potluck dinner.
- ‘Priestless Sunday’ highlights needs of rural Alaska Catholic parishes
- Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — Dubbed “Priestless Sunday,” next weekend will find parish leaders filling the pulpits at Roman Catholic churches all around Fairbanks and the road systems.
- Fairbanks artists work on grand mural for new Anchorage civic center
- Monday, Sept. 22, 2008
- Head bent low, Patricia Frison carefully applied a narrow band of copper foil around a small piece of colored glass in the Expressions in Glass studio Friday afternoon, smoothing it gently into position with her fingertips.
- Resident’s quick action saves cabin
- Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — Quick action by the occupant of a small cabin on Farmers Loop near Sundance Loop, saved the structure from burning down Tuesday.
- Senate candidate Bird protests over forum exclusion
- Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — Alaskan Independence Party member Bob Bird, a U.S. Senate candidate, is protesting his exclusion from an Oct. 7 candidate forum sponsored by the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce.
- Woman helps bring breast cancer awareness to Fairbanks
- Monday, Sept. 15, 2008
- FAIRBANKS — In October, Odette Butler and a cadre of volunteers plan to “Paint the Town Pink.”